Walker, Ryan And Cantor Will Be Undone By One-Dimensional Politics

It's amazing to watch Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker head towards political destruction.

They won elections, but lost their bearings.

Each forgot - - or didn't care - -  that politics needs nuance and shading and cooperation to meet the needs of, and advance a common good in a 50-state union of more than 300 million people.

Instead, they have become too obedient to self-generated certainty, too enamored with power and its exercise on behalf of the already-wealthy and powerful.

Winning with only 52% of the vote, Walker has become a caricature of a chief elected officer.

He breaks promises and speaks falsely, governs by surprise and aggregates more power to himself.

He dissembles, busts unions, budgets with a chainsaw, grabs off rule-making authority previously held by the Legislature, plans to radically remake a key regulatory department - - the Department of Natural Resources - - through Executive Order into a so-called Charter department with less public input, fewer hiring and procedural restrictions, and thus more advantage for Big Business.

Ryan believed his press clippings that labeled him a brilliant, infallible guy, and so he thought he'd make history by cutting and privatizing even Medicare - - and with what supportive constituency anywhere outside his echo chamber, you ask?  - - because his party had retaken the House in 2010 and gave him the plum chairmanship of Ways and Means.

So this was his chance to cement his status among Republicans, Tea Partiers and Think-Tank Corporate America as The Number One Friend Of The Private Sector, or The Man Who Undid Medicare.

Or as the right calls it: Socialized Medicine.

Cantor's ascent to power in the House as #2 to the increasingly hapless John Boehner has led to a rather gruesome stumble - - substituting ideology and Tea Party slogans for thoughtful leadership in holding emergency aid to Joplin tornado victims hostage to equivalent budget cuts.

Thus treating tornado sufferers like they'd been caught sneaking to the front of the line for seconds at a church supper.

I'm sure my right-wing readers will send comments full of conflation with Democrats who went on power trips, or who abused their mandates, but there is something troubling about this GOP bunch - - they're all about the same age, with the same talking points and buzzwords available on automatic pilot, believing they are Ronald Reagen's political offspring - -  though they forget Reagan's humanity and pragmatism - - all evincing a dumbfounding level of heartlessness and venality that brands them as extremists.

That has already begun to backfire (See: Wisconsin recalls; Walker plummeting popularity; Upstate NY GOP House election defeat Tuesday, etc.)

Yes, damage has been done, and it'll take a long time to correct, but, when voted out of power,  this trio, their Wisconsin allies and others will find they had no one to blame but themselves.